Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

I was raised in Utah. I never have been LDS (Mormon) although many of my friends and extended family are.

My parents are Protestant, Disciples of Christ to be exact and they raised me to be a God fearing Christian. Daddy sang in the Choir, Mom rotated between various duties for the church but was always on some committee or other. They are good, decent people and my childhood was a happy one, I knew I was loved. I went through my entire childhood and early teenage years with a warm and convicted belief in God. I remember praying at night, telling Him my problems and asking for guidance. I remember the comforting feeling that I was not alone and the heartfelt belief that by living my life in a certain way I would be granted access to Heaven.

Being non-Mormon in Utah is an interesting experience. There are so few non-Mormons, that everyone you meet automatically assumes you are part of the club. . The vast majority of Mormons I know are decent, kind, normal folks who never looked down on me or treated me any differently due to my non-LDS status. But just like any cross-section of the human population you run into the occasional ass and there were a few times when I was excluded from activities or certain children were forbidden to play with me. While it stung when this happened, Mom and Dad helped me realized that it really wasn't a reflection on me.

Daddy was raised as a Mormon in Utah. He was excommunicated from the LDS church after he started attending church with my mom. He wasn't heartbroken about it, he had done some investigating and found that the Mormon church was not all it was cracked up to be and he was ready to give up his membership. Mom and Dad always told me that while I should love and respect our friends and family who belonged to that church I should be careful not to buy into their beliefs because they were untrue. This was a regular mantra at my house, especially when I hit dating age. I think one of my parents greatest fears was that I might marry a Mormon.

Mormons believe in having big families. I don't mean three or four children, I mean ten or twelve. As a result, the public school system in Utah is very crowded. My parents have always been very gung-ho about education and although we never had a lot of money (Daddy was a diesel mechanic, Mom worked as a secretary for the National Weather Service) they tightened the belt and sent me to private school. I attended Catholic school, Southern Baptist school and a plain old "Christian" school.

I remember sitting (at the age of ten) in Chapel at the Southern Baptist school and wondering why the messages I heard at school were so different from the messages I heard at church. The book was the same, the pulpit was the same, the chapels even smelled the same. Why did the God that they spoke of at school seem so different from the one I heard about at church? Why was one message so full of anger while the other was so full of understanding and forgiveness. Was this the same God they were talking about? My mind soon began to play over all the differences in all the religions I had encountered. In my limited experience I had noticed and been very confused by four different versions of Christianity. Mom and Dad had told me that the Mormon version was untrue, but what about the others? They all claimed to be correct yet they were all so different.

While my personal faith in God was still very much a part of my thinking, I soon became very disenchanted with organized religion. I could see the beauty in the philosophy, but it was tainted by the disparity of attitude and method I saw in all the religions. When I would ask adults about the incongruities I had noticed their answers would range from ambivalent to almost hostile. Looking back, I think that the adults I asked didn't really know the answers to these questions either. Perhaps they thought that if they gave an appropriately vague answer, the little ten year old with the big questions would just go away.

I eventually did.